Living with the king

During late August 2025, the Hunterian Museum of Zoology in Glasgow hosted Snake Summer, an event covering snakes in science, folklore and fantasy organised by Dr Will Tattersdill of the University of

Britain is a country mercifully bereft of threatening fauna–or so you might believe. John Lewis-Stempel provides a miscellany of our otherwise benign land’s more fearsome critters

Reins in hands, three young sisters ride the coils of an enormous blue snake. Waving a rattle and smiling happily, the fourth, a baby, is held around her plump middle by its tail. Passers-by dive out

A mbling along diani beach road, 30km south of Mombasa in Kenya, I am parallel with the Indian Ocean and minutes from the powdery, cream sand of Africa’s best-known beach. It’s February, the heart of

Kingdom Sunday 6.20pm BBC One

Unfairly maligned as a sneaky troublemaker, the quicksilver ferret is a characterful, curious and highly intelligent creature–with fascinating regal and cultural trappings to boot, writes Octavia Pollock